Cheracol with Codeine News

MONDAY, Sept. 19, 2016 – Codeine is unsafe for children and should no longer be given to them, a new report from a leading pediatricians' group warns. Codeine has been used to treat kids' pain and coughs for decades "because we thought it was safer than other narcotics," said report author Dr. Joseph Tobias. But doctors have learned that the way codeine is processed in the body is very dangerous for children and can result in death, said Tobias, chief of anesthesiology and pain medicine for Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Codeine is converted by the liver into morphine, but genetic differences between people can prompt the liver to create too much morphine in some and too little in others, he explained. "Now, lo and behold, we're learning that due to this genetic variation it's a very dangerous medication," Tobias added. Children who rapidly metabolize codeine into an ... Read more

THURSDAY, May 12, 2016 – Chronic pain may be a major driver behind the recent surge in addiction to prescription painkillers, a new survey finds. Opioid addiction and prescription drug abuse in the United States are among the country's biggest public health threats, the researchers said. And, more than eight in 10 people abusing prescription drugs said they were doing so to treat pain. "While the association between chronic pain and drug addiction has been observed in prior studies, this study goes one step further to quantify how many of these patients are using these substances specifically to treat chronic pain," said study corresponding author Dr. Daniel Alford. "It also measures the prevalence of chronic pain in patients who screen positive for illegal drug use and prescription drug abuse," Alford said in a Boston University news release. He is director of the Safe and Competent ... Read more

MONDAY, Feb. 1, 2016 – Taking prescription narcotic painkillers doesn't improve movement or reduce disability in people with pain related to nerve damage, researchers have found. "Even though [narcotic] medications can be a powerful pain killer, it does not necessarily mean improved function will follow. Pain is not the only factor in determining function," study lead author and pain expert Geoff Bostick, an associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Alberta in Canada, said in a university news release. The research included almost 800 patients with pain due to nerve damage, from causes such as diabetes and pinched nerves. Some were prescribed narcotic painkillers – such as morphine, codeine and Tylenol 3 – while others didn't receive the drugs. At 6-month and 12-month follow-ups, those who took the painkillers didn't show greater improvements in movement and ... Read more

MONDAY, Dec. 14, 2015 – Americans continue to be plagued by an epidemic of prescription narcotic painkiller abuse, and a new study finds primary care physicians are by far the biggest prescribers of the drugs. Researchers led by Dr. Jonathan Chen, of Stanford University, looked at data from 2013 Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage claims. They focused on prescriptions for narcotic painkillers containing hydrocodone (drugs such as Vicodin), oxycodone (Oxycontin and Percocet), codeine and others in this class, known as opioids. In sheer number of prescriptions written, the largest prescribers were primary care physicians. For example, family practice doctors issued 15.3 million prescriptions, while internal medicine physicians (another type of primary care doctor) issued 12.8 million, the researchers found. The study also found that nurse practitioners wrote 4.1 million ... Read more

TUESDAY, July 7, 2015 – A new study looks at which patients prescribed a short course of narcotic painkillers may be most prone to long-term abuse. The study finds – perhaps not surprisingly – that people with prior histories of drug abuse, or current or former smokers, were much more likely to go beyond that short-term prescription. The drugs in question are "opioid" painkillers such as oxycodone (Oxycontin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), codeine and methadone, among others. The study was led by Dr. W. Michael Hooten, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. His team tracked outcomes for nearly 300 patients given a first-time, short-term prescription for one of this class of narcotic painkillers in 2009. The investigators found that nearly one in every four of the patients continued to take the medication for extended periods of time. Specifically, the study found that 21 ... Read more

ISSUE: FDA is investigating the safety of using codeine-containing medicines to treat coughs and colds in children under 18 years because of the potential for serious side effects, including slowed or difficult breathing. Children, especially those who already have breathing problems, may be more susceptible to these serious side effects. In 2013, FDA warned against using codeine in children who recently had surgery to remove their tonsils and/or adenoids. In April 2015, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that codeine must not be used to treat cough and cold in children under 12 years, and that codeine is not recommended in children and adolescents between 12 and 18 years who have breathing problems, including those with asthma and other chronic breathing problems. FDA will continue to evaluate this safety issue and will consider the EMA recommendations. Final conclusions ... Read more

TUESDAY, May 12, 2015 – Fewer new mothers have been prescribed the painkiller codeine since public health officials warned about a rare, but potential risk of overdose for breast-feeding babies, a new study says. Experts said the study results, reported in the May 12 Journal of the American Medical Association, are good news. "The trend is going in the direction we want it," said lead researcher Kate Smolina, of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. On the other hand, she added, a significant number of women were still being prescribed codeine in 2011 – three to four years after U.S. and Canadian health officials first issued their warnings. "Prescriptions are still too high," Smolina said. "We'd like to see it closer to zero." Codeine is an ingredient in certain prescription painkillers and cough medications. It was long considered the safest narcotic painkiller ... Read more

MONDAY, April 13, 2015 – Use of prescription narcotic painkillers is common in pregnancy and increases the likelihood a baby will be born small or early, or go through painful drug withdrawal, a new study finds. These prescription painkillers, also called opioids, include drugs such as hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (Oxycontin), codeine and morphine. Nearly 30 percent of the Tennessee mothers-to-be in the new study used at least one of these drugs while pregnant, and the associated risks went up if they also smoked or took antidepressants. "I was surprised by the number of women prescribed opioid pain relievers in pregnancy," said lead author Dr. Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "I was also surprised by how commonly women smoked in pregnancy, and how much that increased the risk of neonatal abstinence ... Read more

WEDNESDAY, April 1, 2015 – Almost a quarter of powerful narcotic painkillers that are prescribed for chronic pain are misused, and the rate of addiction among patients hovers near 10 percent, a new review shows. The findings raise questions about the benefits of widespread use of these painkillers to treat chronic pain, the researchers said. "On average, misuse was documented in approximately one out of four or five patients, and addiction [was found] in approximately one out of 10 or 11 patients," who were prescribed the drugs as part of their treatment for chronic pain, wrote Kevin Vowles, from the University of New Mexico, and colleagues. In the new review, researchers analyzed 38 published studies, 35 of which were conducted in the United States. The average rates of misuse were 21 percent to 29 percent, while the average rates of addiction were 8 percent to 12 percent, according ... Read more

MONDAY, Oct. 20, 2014 – A child receives the wrong medication or the wrong dosage every eight minutes in the United States, according to a recent study. Nearly 700,000 children under 6 years old experienced an out-of-hospital medication error between 2002 and 2012. Out of those episodes, one out of four children was under a year old. As the age of children decreased, the likelihood of an error increased, the study found. Though 94 percent of the mistakes didn't require medical treatment, the errors led to 25 deaths and about 1,900 critical care admissions, according to the study. "Even the most conscientious parents make errors," said lead author Dr. Huiyun Xiang, director of the Center for Pediatric Trauma Research at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. That conscientiousness may even lead to one of the most common errors: Just over a quarter of these mistakes involved a ... Read more

MONDAY, April 21, 2014 – Emergency room physicians still hand out hundreds of thousands of codeine prescriptions for children every year, despite warnings that kids' responses to codeine vary wildly and the drug can cause an accidental overdose, a new study finds. ER doctors issued about 560,000 to 880,000 prescriptions for codeine to kids each year between 2001 and 2010, according to an analysis of hospital survey data collected annually by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have hundreds of thousands of children still getting codeine, even though there are better and safer alternatives available," said study author Dr. Sunitha Kaiser, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The study was published online April 21 in the journal Pediatrics. These prescriptions continued to be handed out despite repeated ... Read more

TUESDAY, Sept. 10 – Women taking prescription painkillers such as Oxycontin, Vicodin and Percocet early in pregnancy are twice as likely to give birth to babies with devastating neural tube defects such as spina bifida, a new study suggests. Despite the doubled risk, researchers described the escalation as "modest" since neural tube defects – which include those of the brain and spine – seldom occur. With study participants' use of prescription opioids, the risk of these birth defects translated to a prevalence of nearly six per 10,000 live births. "We want to keep in mind that major birth defects of any kind affect only 2 percent to 3 percent of live births, so the risks we've identified should be kept in perspective," said study author Mahsa Yazdy, a postdoctoral associate at Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University. "Even though we found a doubling in the risk of neural tube ... Read more

THURSDAY, Feb. 21 – Children who are given codeine for pain relief after surgery to remove tonsils or adenoids are at risk for overdose and death, U.S. health officials said Thursday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a new boxed warning – the agency's strongest caution – will be added to the labels of codeine-containing products to warn about this danger. The FDA strongly recommends against the use of codeine to manage pain in children after surgery to remove tonsils or adenoids, and suggests that doctors use an alternate pain reliever. The agency also said parents and caregivers need to be aware of the risks and ask for a different pain medicine if their children are prescribed codeine after having their tonsils or adenoids removed. Codeine is an opioid (narcotic) medication used to treat mild to moderate pain and is often prescribed to children after tonsil or adenoid ... Read more

[UPDATED 02/20/2013] FDA notified the public about new actions being taken to address a known safety concern with codeine use in certain children after tonsillectomy and/or adenoidectomy (surgery to remove the tonsils and/or adenoids). A new BOXED WARNING, FDA’s strongest warning, will be added to the drug label of codeine-containing products about the risk of codeine in post-operative pain management in children following tonsillectomy and/or adenoidectomy. A Contraindication, which is a formal means for FDA to make a strong recommendation against use of a drug in certain patients, will be added to restrict codeine from being used in this setting. The Warnings/Precautions, Pediatric Use, and Patient Counseling Information sections of the drug label will also be updated. Health care professionals should prescribe an alternate analgesic for post-operative pain control in children who are ... Read more

FRIDAY, Feb. 1 – Teaching people how to recognize and respond to prescription painkiller overdoses could significantly reduce the number of overdose deaths, a new study suggests. Overdoses of these powerful opioid drugs are a major cause of emergency hospital admissions and preventable deaths in many countries. Opioids include hydrocodone (brand name Vicodin), oxycodone (OxyContin and Percocet), morphine and codeine. Since 2005, Massachusetts has had more opioid-related overdose deaths than motor vehicle deaths, so the state introduced several strategies to tackle the problem, including training drug users, their families and friends, and potential bystanders to prevent, recognize and respond to opioid overdoses. The participants in the overdose education and naloxone distribution (OEND) programs received instruction in how to recognize signs of overdose, seek help, stay with victims ... Read more